


Lares et Penates

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Femslash, Backstory, Gen, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-04 03:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6639667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shmi Skywalker and all the days that were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lares et Penates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> death of original characters, references to non-con

She is tall, almost as tall as the grass. Shmi loves the feel of spring on her shoulders, the smell of wet soil under her bare feet. Today is her fourth birthday. Mother and Mama have promised her a special treat when she comes in from her chores. She races through them, feeding the vala birds and checking for fresh, warm eggs under their backsides.

Back inside, the whole house smells of Mama's warm bread, always baking or cooling. Mama sells the bread and the eggs, and this buys them nice things, like the cloth for Adalith's school clothes. Mother's job away in the city repairing spaceships and fixing up farm equipment pays for all the rest. Shmi has Mother's clever hands and quick mind, but it's Mama's tender heart she loves curling up next to, listening to stories at bedtime. Once upon a time there were two little girls, a pilot called Aranna Skye, and a chef called Eshma Walker, and they fell in love. That's the story Shmi likes best.

* * *

There are no jobs left on their little world. It's more complicated than that, says Mother, but it means they have to move. They pack up their house, sell what can be sold, and carry their household gods in a sack as they board one of the ships Mother has repaired. Shmi is excited. She is nine years old and ready for new skies. Adalith is not. She's nearly thirteen and she likes their planet very much, thank you.

"It will be an adventure," Mother says as Shmi watches the stars streak by.

Their ship runs into problems, most of which Mother can fix, and one she can't.

Mama and Mother talk for hours in the closed cockpit while Adalith and Shmi wait outside. Shmi holds one small idol of her favorite goddess, rubbing her thumb over the smooth stone.

"It's going to be fine," Adalith says in her grown-up voice.

But it's not.

A lifepod can hold one adult, or two children if they squeeze. It holds a little food, nothing like Mama's good food but life-sustaining nutrient bars that can last them a month, and the small stone gods. There is room for kisses, and tears, and promises for the girls to swear to take care of each other.

The pod reaches one of the shipping lanes. They're picked up within a week. Of the other ship, there is no trace when their rescuers backtrack.

* * *

The colonists aboard the rescue ship will give them passage, and food, and not ask anything of them. Adalith breathes a relief she won't share with her little sister, who cries each night. Shmi wants Mama's warm arms, not this cold, hard floor she sleeps on next to her sister.

They travel for a month, slowly crawling through space towards a planet Shmi has never heard of. They are treated kindly by the colonists, allowed to play with the other children. The kindness only extends so far, though. When the ship arrives at last, none of the families aboard have room to take on two more. The new world is harsh and dry. The few skills they have of running the farm back home are useless in this grinding sand.

Adalith finds work as a house girl, cleaning and cooking for one of the few wealthy citizens, a great, gross slug named Gardulla.

"You go to school," Adalith tells Shmi. Her hands are red from scrubbing, but her eyes are dry. "You learn how to be better than this." She pays for a small room, and takes scraps from her job to feed them both. It's a hard life, and Shmi has learned to stop complaining. She attends her lessons, and she helps her sister clean after school is finished each day.

* * *

Sand gets everywhere, and something is in Adalith's lungs. She never stops coughing, even when she sleeps. Finally, Shmi convinces her to go to the lone medical droid who services the outpost where they live. The droid has no emotions, no kindness, when it shows them the darkness spreading over her sister's lungs.

Medicines are expensive. If Shmi leaves school and she works beside Adalith, there's just enough to pay for the medicine and keep their little room. When Adalith is too sick to work, it's no longer enough.

Fourteen isn't old enough to understand the terms of a loan. Shmi takes them on anyway, signing her name to the document Gardulla offers in exchange for the money to take care of her sister. Adalith is shrinking in her bed, tiny and dustlike, and Shmi is the bigger one now, watching over her.

* * *

Burials are luxuries, for the rich and for the rural poor. Shmi doesn't want to sign over her sister's remains, but the water that can be extracted and the nutrients that can be rendered are enough to pay the last of the medical bills for treatments that never helped.

Until the next bill comes. And the next.

She can't repay the Hutt. She has only the collateral which she signed away last year. At fifteen, Shmi officially becomes Gardulla's property. She is given a place to sleep, and enough food to eat. Her duties don't change.

Shmi finds a bit of land no one cares about. She buries the goddess idol and wishes flowers would grow on this dry world.

* * *

Gardulla isn't as harsh a mistress as she could be. Shmi keeps up her work. Some slaves, not in her household, are used for more wretched purpose. Gardulla doesn't care, and doesn't lend out her possessions to be used by others. It's a poor life, but not as poor as some.

The changes are gradual, and she has no idea what they mean for a very good reason. It's not until she feels the movement in her belly that she wonders. Her first thought is that she's contracted a parasite, another dark creature growing inside her the way the disease ravaged her sister. The medical droid gives her a different answer, an impossible answer.

It's the only time she is ever beaten by any owner. The blows strike her back and her face, mindful of her condition, but she cannot give the name of the father. There is no father, no other slave to worry about property rights, no freed man who might come to claim the child after it's born.

"She doesn't know," says Gardulla's chief henchman. "Stupid bit was probably forced."

Shmi doesn't think so, doesn't think she could have made herself forget such a horrible thing. The only lovers she's been with are women. She knows what sex is even if she's had no lover for some time.

"Fine," Gardulla says in her own language. "Go rest, and eat well. That's my property you're growing in there."

* * *

He's perfect, the exact number of toes and fingers he should have, and lungs to wail the paintings off the walls. Shmi loves him forever the moment she first holds him. The other women coo around her and tell her she won't remember the pain later. She knows they're wrong. She's going to hold onto this pain, keep it, and remind herself that pain can be overcome knowing pain ends with this small piece of perfection in her weary arms.

She is permitted to name him. She is permitted to keep him. He will grow up a slave, working with her, sold with her if she is sold. She's brought him into a hard life, but 'freedom' is another word for 'starvation'. Her baby will live.

* * *

He's clever.

She watches her small child play, and she sees Mother in his every motion. He has her quick mind with tools and machines and circuits. By the age of four, he's building his own toys, giggling as he finds a way to slot pieces into place that would never have occurred to her.

Anakin is a large part of the reason Watto gambles with her mistress. He's seen the boy, and he wants his mind working for Watto's business. Shmi doesn't cry when she's told she and her son have been sold away. She packs their few possessions and the gods, and she carries her child to their new home, far from where Adalith's grave lies.

"You must be kind," she tells him every day and every night. She wants him to have Mama's gentle nature as much as Mother's keen brain and mechanical ability. She has no other legacy to give him.

* * *

Shmi only cries where Watto can't see and can't hear. He's been grouchier since Ani left, with the loss of his business and his funds and his pride. He snaps at her more, but he won't strike her. Part of him will always be afraid the Jedi will come back and hurt him. Shmi tells her secrets and her sorrows to her droid, and he tells no one at all.

The girl doesn't come back, the one who left with the Jedi and with her son. Another girl who looks strikingly similar does, and announces to Watto she is here on behalf of the Queen of Naboo. She demands Watto sell Shmi to her for a fair price. Shmi listens and her heart grieves. Had the girl come in humility, Watto would have taken her coin. Instead, he is haughty to her arrogance, refusing the deal and sending her away.

Perhaps she has friends, or perhaps she has learned from her mistake. The next to come is a young man with a soft voice and a clever face. He's dressed as a traveler. She has the same sense of him as she did from her son and from the man who saved him from this life.

"Call me Ben," says the man, not trying Qui-Gon's tricks, not demanding like the envoy from the Queen. He smiles and deals with Watto as an equal, letting Watto pretend at concern over Shmi's safety with a strange man before agreeing to sell her.

"You can go," Watto says to her, grumpy to the end. Perhaps his concern isn't entirely feigned. "Don't hurt her," he tells her new owner. "She's a good friend."

"I am not your friend. I was your property." She takes her few possessions, the last of her household gods, and the droid her amazing son built for her.

She should be frightened, but she can't be, not with him. Ben exudes a calm she can't describe although he also glimmers with a chained energy, as though he might explode into motion at any moment but chooses not to, not yet. She likes him. She likes him even more when he pauses outside the settlement and says, "I told you you're free now, didn't I?"

"You didn't. I was hoping."

Ben smiles.

Shmi is utterly unsurprised when he leads her, not to the distant homestead he told Watto about, but to his ship, where a friend waits.

Qui-Gon bows in respect to her before taking her hands. "It's good to see you again." There is a stiffness about his motions that wasn't present when they met. His eyes are bright, though. "Forgive my tardiness. We've had much to do before we could return for you."

"Where's Anakin?"

"Coruscant. He's with the other younglings at the moment. When we return, I will take him on as my Padawan."

"Or I could," Ben says quickly, and Shmi reads the lines of an argument she's come into months too late. There are words traveling between them at the speed of heat lightning. Her impulsive young guide has known the man before her long enough to know his every thought. Someday, she thinks, so will her child.

"You haven't recovered yet." The words aren't for her ears, though she can hear the half-pause, a word Ben almost slots onto the end of the sentence. He's used to addressing Qui-Gon by another name. Curious.

* * *

He's grown since she last saw him. There is a more measured suspicion in her baby's kind eyes. The price of his education has been to learn how to control the sway of his heart. Anakin doesn't fling himself into her arms as she's often dreamed. He does allow her to hold him as long as she wants.

"I've learned so much," he tells her, delighted with himself.

"I'm so proud," she replies because she should. She shouldn't have the slight nervous twinge in her belly when she sees him. Anakin isn't her baby any longer. Her impossible son is something new.

"You can't stay with him," Qui-Gon says apologetically. "The Jedi Council doesn't know I've retrieved you. They wouldn't approve."

Behind him, she sees a frustrated expression cross Ben's face. "They will find out, mark my words. But I swear not to tell them," he adds when the other two Jedi turn to him. Another price, although not one spoken: Ben will be silent about bringing Shmi to where her son can visit, and Ben will be the one to train him.

"The Council has issues with my methods." Qui-Gon isn't saying everything, and Anakin doesn't appear to mind. He rattles off the exercises he's learning, the names of the other children he's met. Shmi absorbs every word.

Ben takes Anakin back to where he lives now. It's not as painful as the day he left her, but it's close. She will see him again, in a day or a week, or whenever he can break away from his studies.

Qui-Gon stays with her as she watches until their transport is long out of sight.

"Thank you. Thank you for bringing me here." She doesn't have words for what this man has done for her family.

"It is the least I can do, and far less than anyone should. There should be no slaves in the Republic. The moment we discovered there were, that should have been the first focus of the Jedi. But everything is political now." He rests a friendly hand on her arm. "I am glad we could find you and your son. You're free now. You can do anything you want to do."

Her heart races uncomfortably. Shmi hasn't been her own person since she wasn't much older than Anakin. "What can I do? I can work on machines. I can clean and I can cook. Are there jobs?"

"Of course. If working pleases you, I can help you find employment. This apartment has been paid for, and food as well. You don't need to worry."

She shakes her head. "Paid for how?"

"The Queen of Naboo carries a large amount of credit here, and she likes you."

The Queen sent her emissary to Tatooine after her ship was stranded and Shmi helped her handmaiden. Small kindnesses make the galaxy spin, Mama told her, and she has told Ani. "I would like to send her my thanks as well."

"I'll pass them along to her."

She can work. She has skills. "I can do anything?"

His kind smile warms the room. "Anything you want. We'll bring Anakin to see you as often as we can. I think it will be good for him. Your son has a great depth of feeling. The Jedi code would like to see him tamp that down. I believe caring will be his greatest strength."

Mama would be pleased.

Shmi sets her household gods in their place, lining them up one by one and asking them to watch over her and Anakin, and their new friends.

"I know what I want to do. You're right. There should be no slaves in the Republic. I want to set the rest free as well."

He stares at her a moment, resetting his view of her. Shmi is aware that up until now Qui-Gon has had a particular image of her: not as brilliant as Anakin, a hard worker, a plain woman he could help. Now he's forced to view her from a different perspective. She watches as he is aware of the change in his own mind, and even allows himself some humor at his own mistake.

"Then that can be what you do. It's a fine task. And as the Council has told me they would prefer I not get into their business, I find myself with sufficient free time on my hands. Would you allow me to help?"

"Of course."


End file.
